


Red

by dietplainlite



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adlock, F/M, His Last Vow, Tumblr: Ladies of Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/pseuds/dietplainlite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And what of that single rose in his hospital room?<br/>Entry for the fourth Ladies of Sherlock challenge on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Francesca_Wayland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Francesca_Wayland/gifts).



It’s news she expected to hear during his time away.  Though logically she knew that if anything had happened to him then, she wouldn’t ever have known for sure. She’d only have been able to guess if he never contacted her again and never returned to London.  More than once, when she hadn’t received a message for more than twelve weeks, she began the process of purging him from her heart and sewing tight the wound so that no chasm remained; the stitches so delicate it wouldn’t leave a scar. 

And every time, she’d have scarcely begun before he reemerged. Usually a text, a string of letters and numbers revealing in their arrangement the beating of his heart.  But twice, he showed up at her door. 

He has been back in London for two thirds of a year when he’s shot in the chest. Eight months back and he comes closer to dying than he had in the twenty eight months he was legally dead.

She sits outside a café in Valencia watching from the shade as a line of school girls crosses the plaza led by an abbess and followed by two novitiates.  The plaque next to the door says something about Hemingway having written one of his articles on the war here, but she doesn’t give a shit about Hemingway.  She imagines for all his bluster he would have cried in her arms like a baby then reduced her to a few sentences less than he used to describe the light in her bedroom.

She reads the email from Kate for the fourth time and sets her phone down, a headache forming behind her right eye.  He’s going to live, apparently.  He’d been leading some poor girl on.  He’d been fucking around with needles again.

Of all the men.  This one.

Phone in hand again, she types out a text, noticing that the polish on her right thumbnail is chipped. No. Chewed off.  She sends the text, strict instructions. A single red rose.  No note. Her real initials.  The ones she was born with.

The dead woman throws a few Euros on the table to pay for her untouched glass of sangria, puts on her hat and sunglasses, and steps into the afternoon sun.


End file.
